Wild About Math!

Promote your Math-related cause, website, or book

If you have a Math-related site, especially one that is non-commercial or mostly non-commercial, and you write me a guest article I’ll likely publish it here. If you want to plug a great Math-related cause, write it up and submit it as well. If you have a book (or product) and you send me a copy then I may write a review of it.

You can save yourself time and effort by first sending me a link to your site or telling me briefly about your book and I’ll write back telling you if I’ll promote it or not.

Occasionally, people write to me asking if I sell ads. I don’t. Currently, the only source of revenue for this blog is from Amazon, from books purchased through the widget in the right sidebar or from links to books in articles.

I’m quite busy these days. I write sporadically. But, if you do the work of writing the article then I’ll likely publish it the same day or within 24 hours. That’s because I like to have content for this blog; I’m just not up to generating lots of it these days.

A couple of examples of guest posts I published are from Alex (Pi Day Challenge) and from Taunia (Rhythm, Rhyme, Results). Neither post was particularly long or elaborate but they both conveyed a message.

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Pi Day Challenge

[ Editor’s Note: Alex Cook is involved in a “Pi Day Challenge” that involves solving 28 puzzles. Alex sent me the following email which I’m forwarding for your enjoyment. Yes, Pi Day was Sunday but the festivities continue! ]

Hello Fellow Math Enthusiasts!

My name is Alex Cook, and I want to let you know about a project I am working on called the Pi Day Challenge.

First off, this project is not exactly my project - it is a project of Matthew Plummer’s, a high school teacher from Hanover, MA - I am helping with some of the logistics!

Starting in 2003, Matthew Plummer started creating “Puzzles” on the computer for students. The puzzles were math and logic based. These puzzles were compiled together, put on his school’s web site (hanoverschools.org), and then launched on Pi Day (March 14th). The objective was to go through each of the puzzles and make it to the end.

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Posted in Math contest, Puzzle | 1 Comment »

Happy Pi Day: interview with pi poet

Happy Pi Day, everyone! Today I have a special treat. I had the opportunity to interview Pi poet, Mike Keith. Mike is into constrained writing and Pi, among other things. Mike recently published a book, Not A Wake, that demonstrates the constrained writing:

A collection of short stories, poetry, plays, puzzles, and other surprises, all constructed according to the rigid rules of “Pilish”, that peculiar variant of English in which the number of letters in successive words is required to follow the digits of the number π = 3.14159265358979…, in this case for a truly grand total of 10,000 decimals. The perfect book for fans of the number Pi, constrained writing, wordplay, puzzles, or experimental prose and poetry.

Mike sent me a copy of “Not a Wake” to review. In case it’s not obvious, the three words of the title of the book have 3, 1, and 4 letters. And, the pattern continues with the subtitle “A Dream Embodying Pi’s Digits Fully for 10000 Decimals.”

This is a fun book. The challenge in writing such a book is to have the writing be natural in the face of a pretty serious constraint! The book accomplishes that beautifully! Mike is clearly a poet as he is able to pluck the right words out of the ether to make the poetry flow. And, he does it for 10,000 words!

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Posted in Fun, Word Fun, Books | 4 Comments »

Rhythm, Rhyme, Results: rapping about Math for Pi Day

[ Editor’s Note:

Taunia from “Rhythm, Rhyme, Results” wrote to me asking if I’d blog about her education site. The site sells fun educational music and, in particular, has some Math songs in their Pi Day Collection. I wrote back letting Taunia know that I rarely plug commercial sites but I liked what her company was doing (luring students to Math with rap music) so I’d give her a plug on two conditions:

1. She sends me a couple of sample songs so that I feel good about what I’m listening to.
2. She writes a guest article for Wild About Math! I emphasized that the guest article should be educational in nature and not at all “salesy.”

Well, I liked what I heard and here is Taunia’s soapbox. ]

Greetings from Rhythm, Rhyme, Results

While researching different math blogs and sites online, we came across “Wild About Math!” and decided to say hello since our educational goals are quite similar. At educationalrap.com we strive to make math (and all academics, actually) fun and creative. And like a lot of math folks out there, we’re celebrating Pi Day on March 14th.

Rhythm, Rhyme, Results (educationalrap.com) is spread out on both US coasts. Our network of collaborators spans across the country, so we’ve come up with a workflow that works for us. We start by picking topics that are required by state assessment standards, and compare those to topics requested specifically by teachers. After researching and outlining a song topic, we then either write the lyrics ourselves or hire a lyricist. We have one artist who composes, writes lyrics, and performs, but most of the time we use a number of artists for every song.

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Review: Manga Guide to Statistics

The Manga Guide to Statistics is a cartoon book in the same style as the publisher’s Manga Guide to Calculus, which I reviewed a while back. It’s been close to thirty years since I studied statistics (in High School) and reading this book brought back memories.

For the same reasons that I liked Manga’s Calculus book, I enjoyed this one. It tells a story. It has pictures, so it engages the visual sense as well as the “word processing” sense. It takes a subject that can be taught in a very dry way and brings it to life, showing how statistics has meaning in real life problems; the importance justifies the mechanical machinery that is central to the study.

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Slide rules rule

The March/April 2009 issue of the Stanford Magazine had this delightful letter to the editor.

GOLDEN RULES

The article on Tom Wyman and his slide rule collection (“Calculating Collector,” Red All Over, January/February) takes me back to 1972, when Hewlett Packard introduced the HP-35, its first pocket scientific calculator, priced at $395. I was living in Palo Alto then, so I went to the Stanford Bookstore to see it. I found a gentleman standing at the counter, experimenting with the display model. When he finished, I asked him if he was thinking of buying one. No, he replied, he was just a salesman who happened to be calling on the store. I asked him what he sold and he answered, “Pickett slide rules.”

“Well,” I said, “doesn’t this new gadget have you worried?”

“Not at all,” he replied, “our slide rules can do anything this can do, at a tenth the price. Our sales are better than ever.”

Of course, the rest is now history, and so are those once-ubiquitous Pickett slide rules.

Richard A. Dirks, Gr. ’62
Asheville, North Carolina

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An information theory puzzle

My brother shared this puzzle with me this morning. He heard it on the radio but no solution was offered. Neither of us know what the answer is so I’m looking forward to one of you posting the answer in the comments. Here’s the puzzle:

Bob and Alice are both millionaires. They’re both curious to know who is richer but they don’t want to tell the other one how much money they have. Without engaging a trusted third party, how can they both know who is richer?

I wonder if the solution has something to do with public and private keys and/or authentication.

So, what’s the answer?

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Posted in Puzzle | 15 Comments »

Nonplussed! Review

“Nonplus” is not a particularly common English word so I looked it up on dictionary.com.

–verb (used with object)
1. to render utterly perplexed; puzzle completely.
–noun
2. a state of utter perplexity.

“Nonplussed” is a book full of perplexing facts, and solid Math to explain the perplexities. In other words, this book is about mathematically provable facts that don’t actually seem to be true.

Here is a great example of the state of being nonplussed and my favorite part of the book. Chapter 13 is all about Friday the 13th. Many of know that every year has at least one Friday the 13th. But, did you know that the 13th day of any month falls more frequently on a Friday than on any other day of the week? Did you know that the first day of any year ending in “01″ (e.g. 1901, 2001) cannot fall on a Friday (or Wednesday or Sunday either)? These are some interested facts explored and proven in this one of fourteen chapters.

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How the St. Louis Arch got its shape

I found this wonderful short video on Science Friday by mathematician Robert Osserman on the Math behind the St. Louis Gateway Arch. This video is a great testament to the beauty of mathematics. Watch it and tell us if you agree.

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Posted in Beauty | 2 Comments »

Intel Partners with President Obama and Commits $200 Million for Math and Science Education

I received this email from Intel yesterday and thought many of you would be interested:

Today, as part of President Obama’s “Educate to Innovate” Campaign, Intel joined with the President to honor America’s best math and science teachers and committed $200 million to help improve math and science achievement in the US. As part of this commitment, Intel will provide math and science training to more than 100,000 U.S. teachers over the next 3 years.

At Intel, it is commonly said that computers aren’t magic, teachers are. And that’s why Intel continues to provide teachers with the knowledge, tools and resources they need to help their students excel in math and science and succeed in an innovation-driven society.

Today’s commitment includes:

1. The expansion of Intel Math – an intensive 80-hour professional development math course for elementary school teachers – to school districts in all 50 states at no cost.
2. New Web-based instruction and collaboration tools for science teachers of all grades as part of the Intel Teach program.

Intel is also continuing its investment in the Intel Science Talent Search and the Intel International Engineering Fair, which inspire more than 600,000 American students each year to pursue math and science research. In fact, next Wednesday, 300 high school seniors will be honored as semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search. The 40 finalists, who will be announced on January 27, will compete for the top prize of $100,000 in Washington, D.C. from March 11-16.

See Intel’s press release for more information.

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